Believe Your Eyes
by auberus11
Summary: Crossover with Grosse Point Blank. Lebanon, 1994. Spike has business in town. So does Martin Blank. Slash warning.
1. Gonna Raise Hell at the Union Ball

**Gonna Raise Hell at the Union Ball**

_"Oh, a storm is threatening  
My very life today  
If I don't get some shelter  
Oh, yeah, I'm gonna fade away.  
-The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter_

**part one: martin**

I hate Beirut. I hate the people, the heat, the smell, and the bombs. Especially the bombs. I really hate the bombs. There have been three large blasts in the forty-eight hours I've been here, and four or five smaller ones. This is the last time that I let Marcella book a job without checking the location first. I've been out of the Army for nearly four years now - the last thing I wanted to do was to head directly into a war zone. I'd almost have preferred to go back to Grosse Point.

Almost.

So here I am in fucking Lebanon, hiding in a bombed-out shell of a house that wouldn't be considered as cover by anyone short of desperate - which I most definitely am.

The mark was a local faction leader, one of the really nasty ones, a knee-jerk right-wing radical with access to a shit ton of explosives; enough to turn Lebanon's simmering civil war into an outright volcano. Fortunately for everyone in this miserable city, he also had a raging case of paranoia and didn't tell anyone else where he'd put his toys - which meant that when I put a silenced 5.56 mm round through his left eye and blew his brains out the back of his head, the Semtex's location went with them.

It was a beautiful shot.

The insane, unwashed terrorist who saw me climbing down out of the nest was not so beautiful, especially as he managed to get off three rounds before I killed him. That brought every other insane, unwashed terrorist in the vicinity down on my head; hence the mild case of desperate I've suddenly come down with.

Grocer's in town and if I can get in touch with him, he'll get me out, but that's a big 'if,' especially if I don't get out of this neighborhood.

I've been waiting for full dark, because as risky as Beirut is at night, being seen would get me nothing but a bad case of the deads. I'm fairly sure that every last one of that crazy bastard's goons are combing the streets for me right now. I saw a pair of them go by less than half an hour ago, but they aren't too well organized at the moment. With a little luck, I can get through to Grocer before that changes.

The door to the house I'm in slams open and I forget about luck, because luck is out of the picture now and it's down to bullets. Except the intruder isn't one of the local boys, isn't local at all. He belongs here even less than I do.

There's nothing about him that suggests any kind of agency affiliation, and if he's lone wolfing it like I am, he's certainly not dressed for it. His hair is bleached platinum-blond, and the leather duster he's got on might work in a movie, but in real life it would get in the way. Even in America he'd stand out a mile; in Lebanon, he's almost otherworldly. He's also the first person I've seen since I got here who isn't visibly armed. All that means, though, is that I won't shoot him on the spot.

I flip off the safety of the M-16 I'm still carrying. "Hands up," I suggest. He flicks me a bored glance, despite the fact that he hadn't previously looked my way. If he's surprised by my presence, he's hiding it well.

"Put it away, mate," he advises. His accent is pure North London, and his voice is amused. Something tells me it's not a bluff, and although I've seen my share of bizarre since leaving Michigan, I've never seen anyone untroubled by the thought of automatic weaponry aimed their way.

* * *

_Author's Notes: This came about due to the combination of four cross-country flights in one week, the Vicodin I've been taking for a back injury, and three sleepless nights. It's unbeta'd, which means that all errors are my own._

_Anything you recognize does not belong to me, and I am not profiting from this in any way. Spike et al belong to the great Joss Whedon; Martin Blank et al belong to Hollywood Pictures._

_Feedback? Is love.  
(crack!plotbunnies need food too)_


	2. My Name is Called Disturbance

**My Name is Called Disturbance**

_"Everywhere I hear the sound  
Of marching, charging feet, boy.  
'Cause summer's here and the time is right  
For fighting in the street, boy.  
-The Rolling Stones, Street Fighting Man_

**part two: spike**

I love war. Love revolutions, civil wars, invasions, football riots - anything that gets the blood running in the streets and fills the air with fear and rage and death. I killed my first Slayer smack in the middle of the Boxer Rebellion, on a night that smelled of fire and fury, and I've never had a finer moment, not in a hundred years.

Beirut is much the same tonight - someone's offed some local nut-job faction leader, and all the humans are literally up in arms about it. Makes things more interesting, as I'm obviously not a local boy; I've had to kill six idiots tonight with more bullets than brains, and not a one of them was remotely worth eating - especially as I've already fed. The streets are full of people with nowhere to go, and refugees make good eating, for all they tend to be undernourished. It's not the nutrients that matter, not for vampires, but the emotions. Tends to be that way for most things that prey on humans, although I've come across a few demon species that require well-fed meals. Not very often, though, and there are certainly none in Lebanon at the moment.

There are a lot of vamps, though - I'm hardly the only one of my kind drawn to war zones, for all I've got a special predilection for them. Most of the ones in town are local, minions an' the like. Beirut has had an established Master for nearly a century now, and they don't take kindly to tourists, any more than the humans around here do. I've had a few run-ins with them over the past week or so.

Theoretically, I could drop in and do the traditional meet and greet, but those things tend to go sour pretty bloody quickly, and I've never really been one for tradition anyway; especially a tradition as boring and ridiculous as that one. I don't need anyone's permission to go where I please. Never have, even in the old days when Angelus thought I should. Just meant taking a beating, is all, and I've always been able to do that. Besides, getting official permission to be here would cut down on the violence I've been reveling in all week, and I'm not having any of that.

Dru's not with me; she's been off with Darla for nearly four months now, the two of them cutting a swath through the capitals of Europe that's been the talk of the demon community since it started, for all that it doesn't compare to the old days. For the first time in nearly half a century, I'm on my own.

I've been doing my own tour, sliding through the world's hot spots like fangs through flesh, adding my own special touches to human destructiveness. Thus far, I've torn through rural Bosnia, hit Sarajevo, Chechnya, Moscow for nostalgia - me an' Dru kicked up a right rumpus there in 1917 - Jerusalem, Cairo, Tehran, and now Beirut. South America's next, an' by the time I'm done there, Dru an' Darla should be right sick of each other, I bloody well hope.

I'm in no mood to have Herself with us for the next half a decade or so. If it were just me, I'd make her mind that I'm not a fledgling anymore, an' that would be that. Dru wouldn't stand for it though, any more than she liked my mouthing off to Angelus back in the old days, so here's hoping that Herself buggers off as soon as she brings Dru back. I haven't spent the past hundred years buried to the fangs in blood and death only to be treated like a fledge again because Darla's feeling nostalgic.

After all, Dru an' Darla aren't the only ones being talked about. My little trip hasn't exactly gone unnoticed, and the rumors are spreading like wildfire. The whole underworld knows that William the Bloody is on the tear again, an' the vamps and demons in my path have had to choose between gettin' out of my way, or bein' gone through. As they are, after all, vamps and demons, of course most picked the latter, an' it's been a brilliant, bloody four months the like of which I haven't seen in near a century; fists an' fangs an' sudden death, all a vampire could ask for.

The local Master is a right bloody sod, near Angelus' age and rumored to be nearly as mean, although I have trouble believing that - not many are as mean as Angelus. Still, he's got his fledges out after me tonight. I saw a pair of them earlier, blundering about as though they'd not been out of the grave ten minutes. Would have dusted them, too, if three of the human idiots hunting the streets tonight hadn't stumbled onto the scene an' been promptly turned into dinner. If Angelus had ever caught me feeding on patrol, he'd have beaten me bloody, an' been right to do it, too. I slipped away, an' none of them had so much as a hint I'd ever been there.

It's a different story at the moment, unfortunately - there's at least five of them on my trail, subject to reinforcements at any moment, an' as much as I love a good fight, I'm not about to take them in the open street. I duck into one of the ruined houses that's still got a door, kicking it shut behind me. That ought to give me a good minute or two to think it out, or it would if there weren't a human behind me with his finger on the trigger of an automatic rifle. I'm bloody well losing it, not to have noticed him the minute I came through the door, but I do have other things on my mind right now. A vampire hunting party is not something to take lightly, no matter how many you've returned to dust an' ashes.

"Hands up," the human suggests in English, as though his skin weren't already a dead giveaway that he's not a local boy. This has to be the one who done for the head nutdjob tonight, then. He's cold-eyed and as full of deadly intent as any vampire, for all that he don't look above twenty-five. Smooth faced, this one, unless you know what you're looking for.

"Point it elsewhere, mate," I advise. "I'm a lot harder to kill than your average terrorist leader." He goes narrow-eyed at that, but I don't let him process it, just keep pushing him with impossibilities. That gun he's holding won't kill any vamps, but it'll definitely provide discouragement, an' slow them down so that they can't overwhelm us with numbers.

"Besides," I continue, "you're gonna need it in a minute, an' if you keep pointing it at me, I'll take it away from you - which you won't like very much." His finger tightens on the trigger, an' I step to him vamp-fast, just past the barrel of the gun on the side closest to him. "Don't," I warn him, an' his face closes down, predator's eyes in a human mask nearly as cold as my own. He knows damn well he's cornered, an' his suspicions are running rampant.

What could turn into an ugly moment turns a whole different kind of ugly as the first of the hunting party breaks through the door in full game face.

Suit-boy fires almost reflexively, puts three rounds through the first fledge and two in the second before he realises the bullets are doing no good, an' then I take over, break off the arm of a chair as a makeshift stake, an' wade on in. I dust the first three in thirty seconds, but by then there's another five in the room, an' no time left for thinking.

One of them, a big, bearded fucker in robes that haven't been washed in far too long, catches me cross-ways along the cheekbone, so I kick him in the knee, feel the snap and crunch of tendons under my boot. He goes down howling, and I abandon the stake in favor of twisting his head off, then turn to the next vamp with his dust still on my hands. Another big, bearded fucker in dirty robes - what a surprise. I get in three good blows before he goes to dust under my fists, and when his remains settle, I'm looking at the human, holding another piece of chair in one hand. His eyes lock on mine, dark and intense, before a blow to the side of my head catches my attention and I turn back to the fight.

Two down, three to go, an' this time at least they aren't stopping to feed. Two of them come after me, the third going after suit-boy. I knock my two's heads together, which stuns the bigger one enough for the stake to slide past his ribs easy as pie. Bad thing is, it goes too deep and turns to dust with him, leaving me bare-handed against the last. He fetches me a good one to the eye, an' I punch him in the chest, knocking him back, then spin a kick to the side of his head that staggers him good. Two hard hits to the face and five hard body blows keep him reeling, and he don't notice my sweeping foot and goes down hard on his back. I plant one foot on his neck and push until his spine cracks, then reach down and twist his head off with one smooth movement.

When I look up, suit-boy has reclaimed his M-16, and it's pointed direct at my face.

"What the _fuck_ was that?!" He's furious, I can smell it, but his voice has gone quiet, darkly intense. "Start talking, or we'll find out if you're fast enough to dodge bullets."

"Don't need to," I tell him, with the most infuriating smirk I've got. "You saw that earlier."

"Those were chest shots, center mass," he says calmly. "I've got an M-16 aimed at your face at point-blank range. It might blow your head off, or you might get lucky and only lose the back half. Either way, I'm thinking that might inconvenience you a little bit."

He'll do it. I can see it in his eyes - and that's not really the way I want to go out. Vamps who take serious head injuries can be permanently damaged, an' I'm not about to risk vegetablization.

"It was a fight," I shrug. I'm not quite sure what to say. It's not like I regularly explain vampires to people; I'm more of a show-you kind of a guy. After all, most of 'em figure it out once the biting starts.

"Yeah, I got that," he says sarcastically. "What the fuck were those things? For that matter, what the fuck are you?"

"Vampires," I say, with as much casual insouciance as I can fit into the word - which is a considerable amount. Both of his eyebrows shoot up.

"Really. And you? Some mystical superhero destined to fight them?"

"Not bloody likely, mate. Wrong gender, first off. And secondly," I vamp out, let the demon's ridges and fangs ripple across my face, "I'm one of the pointy teeth brigade myself."

* * *

_Author's Notes__: As has been mentioned before, this is crack!fic - and unbeta'd, no less. Any mistakes are my own fault._

_Feedback? Is love._


	3. I'm All Sixes and Sevens and Nines

**I'm All Sixes and Sevens and Nines**

_"Did you ever wake up to find  
A day that broke up your mind,  
Destroyed your notion of circular time?_

_It's just that demon life has got you in its sway:  
It's just that demon life has got you in its sway."  
-The Rolling Stones, Sway_

**part three - martin:**

My first instinct is to shoot him in the face, but since that's my first instinct when it comes to a good 75 percent of the human race, I manage to restrain myself. My next instinct is to ask questions, and that's an instinct I've never been too good at reining in. The increase in pay wasn't my only reason for leaving the CIA's protective aegis.

"If you're a vampire too, then why were they after you?" The vampire shakes his head slightly, fangs and ridges smoothing back into humanity.

"Do I look like I'm from around here?" he asks. It's obviously a rhetorical question, as he continues speaking without waiting for an answer. "Vampires are territorial, and as I haven't been through this way in nearly forty years, the locals have forgotten that it doesn't pay to get me brassed off."

"Right," I mutter, trying to wrap my brain around the increasingly surreal turn that my evening has taken. "You don't look forty years old."

"I'm a vampire," he says impatiently. "I haven't aged since 1880."

"Of course," I say, and decide that the shocked hysteria will have to wait until I'm no longer in Beirut. "Well," I tell him, "it's been nice meeting you. I'm leaving now." He doesn't move.

"Look," I say, "you're between me and the door. You saved my life, but that doesn't mean I won't kill you. Get out of my way."

"No can do," he says. "Sorry." I don't even have time to blink before he's got one hand on the rifle barrel, pushing it up to the ceiling, and the other around my throat. He's a good two inches shorter than I am, and about a million times more physically intimidating.

"Now," he continues, smiling up at me, "you can cooperate, or we can do this the hard way."

"What do you want?" I ask.

"Nothin' complicated," he says. "You're doubtless planning a quick getaway from the well-watered cedars of Lebanon. I want to go with you."

The biblical reference is surprising, but then, I've never encountered a vampire before. Maybe it's required reading for the undead, part of some kind of know-thine-enemy doctrine.

"I can't," I tell him flatly.

"See, that's not a word I like to hear," he says conversationally. "Unless it's used in the context of 'I can't take any more, stop, please'. Which I can arrange, if you keep being stubborn."

"It's impossible," I say, and keep talking before he can demonstrate his displeasure at my words. "I don't have a definite way out, and the only contact I have in-country is the very definition of unreliable."

"So introduce us," the vampire says. "He'll be reliable enough once I have a go at him."

"While I'm sure that dead men are very reliable, they're not very good at securing documentation and a way across the border," I snap. "Besides, don't you have your own ways of moving around? Some sort of secret vampire way of avoiding customs, patrols, and overly nosy border agents?"

"Usually," he says. He doesn't seem irritated by my outburst of temper; instead he looks amused, like a grown-up looking at a precocious child. I fight back the automatic desire to prove him wrong. Being underestimated might be the only thing that gets me out of this situation alive.

"So get out of Lebanon that way," I tell him, and pull hard on the rifle, hoping to get it away from him. His muscles don't even tighten, and the rifle doesn't so much as budge in his grasp. I start compiling a list in my head of any method I've heard of for killing vampires. Staking and decapitation have already been proven; sunlight's no good for another six hours. Crosses, holy water, fire...

"I can't," the vampire says, interrupting my chain of thought. "Lebanon's a sort of demonic no-man's land. The local government and its most prominent opposition are both infiltrated, and if you piss off the locals, dying quickly is generally the best you can hope for."

I can't help but wonder if the demonic politics in the area are a result of the human mess, or if it is the other way around.

"Not sure if your lot influenced ours," the vampire echoes my thoughts, "or if our lot's craziness spilled over onto you. Sixty-five years ago, I'd have said the latter, no question. Now?" He shrugs. "It don't matter to me either way. I just want to get out of here in one piece. And you'll either help me," he increases the pressure on my throat, "or I'll turn you and make you help me. See, once you're a vampire, you'll heal fast enough that your mate won't notice any damage when we ring him up."

The impersonal resolve in his face is more frightening than the fangs were.

"I don't have a choice, do I?" My question is rhetorical, and I barely murmur it, but he hears me anyway, and answers me.

"No," he says, "you really don't."

"Fine," I say. "But if we're going to do this, we do it my way. No intimidating my contact. I may have to work with him again. And if you tell him what you are without my express permission, I will light you on fire and douse your smoking corpse with holy water before burying you on the most heavily-consecrated ground in Lebanon."

He raises both eyebrows, but in appreciation rather than intimidation.

"Points for imagery, pet," he says. "I'll behave. I promise."

The sheer wickedness of his smile is far from confidence-inducing.

* * *

_Author's Notes__: Neither the songs quoted here nor the characters used belong to me. This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are my fault. _

_The first person to accurately tell me the songs from which I took the titles for the first three chapters will get a drabble of their choice._

_Feedback is love! Tell me what you think!_


	4. Seen Too Much in Too Few Years

**Seen Too Much in Too Few Years**

_"Living high, sitting in the sun:_  
_Sit on your ass 'till your work is done._  
_You lazy mother, your hands are clean:_  
_You pull the strings and you got the clout._  
_There's something filthy living in your mouth,_  
_Pushing your buttons. You get away free..."_  
_-The Rolling Stones, Dirty Work_

  
part four: spike

"Right," the assassin says, breathing hard through his nose just like Angelus used to do when he got annoyed. "The first thing we have to do is get out of this neighborhood. I'd say we could disguise ourselves with the clothes of our dead opponents -- except that they turned to dust when our enemies did."

"Guess that means we'll have to fight it out," I tell him. He blinks twice at that, all of the stress and emotion draining from his face like water out of a sieve. He looks almost serene, and I can't help smiling in approval. It's a rare human who takes to killing as gladly and easily as I do.

"We might have to, at that," he says, then frowns at me. "You don't need to look so happy about it."

"Like you're not," I scoff. "Vampire, here. I can hear your pulse picking up, an' smell your anticipation."

"That's really creepy," he says deadpan. "And I am _not_ happy about it. If we make too much noise, my contact might refuse to deal with us."

"I already told you, mate, I can handle that."

"And I already told you no." He crosses to the window and looks out at the empty street, keeping me in his peripheral vision the entire time. "It's pretty quiet out there. We should find somewhere to stay for the night."

"You mean the day," I correct. "Bursting into flames is not a part of my plan."

"Look, Beirut is bad enough during the day. At night, it's hell on earth."

"It's not so bad," I tell him. "You should have seen Paris in 1943. Or Verdun in 1917."

"Right," he says again. "Because you're a vampire. You've been around since the Victorian era." 

"Is mild hysteria a normal characteristic of professional assassins?"

He gives me a dark look. "You have no idea. We keep the pharmaceutical companies solvent. Of course, we also keep them in business, though we do that by doing our jobs, rather than by medicating our various neuroses."

"You'd be some shrink's worst nightmare," I say admiringly. 

I like this one. He'd make one hell of a vampire, and I'd turn him if I didn't think that Dru would like him a little too much. His face is too innocent, his eyes are too hard, and the killer's twist of thats pretty mouth would put her into incoherent ecstasies for days. Maybe I can introduce him to Darla.

"Thanks," he says. "My original point, though, is that the street is clear. Would you like to get moving, or shall we stand here fencing all night?"

"Let's get moving," I tell him. "Where's this contact of yours?"

"Halfway across town. I'm counting on you to eat anyone that comes after us, by the way. Gunshots will bring half the city down on our heads."

"We wouldn't want that," I say sarcastically.

"Probably not. They'd rip us to small, quivering pieces."

"You do have a way with words, don't you?"

"It's a gift." He opens the door and gestures me to go ahead of him.

"Look, I'm not going to eat you," I tell him impatiently. "I need you to get out of Lebanon, don't I?"

"That's good to know," he says. "You still get to go first."

* * *

_Author's Notes__: This is unbeta'd; all mistakes are my own. _

The first person to tell me which Rolling Stones songs all of the chapter titles come from will get a 500-word story of their choice.

Feedback? Is love. 


	5. Burn the Candle Right Down

**Chapter Five: Burn the Candle Right Down**

_"It's all for the greater glory,_

_It's all for a Saturday night._

_There's a hole where your face used to be:_

_I got you in my telescope sight."_

_-The Rolling Stones, Fight_

_  
_"What's your name?" the vampire asks, about a thousand yards later.

"Be quiet," I tell him. "Speaking English in these streets is a bad idea." He ignores me.

"Tell me, or I'll ask louder," he murmurs.

"Martin," I tell him. "Martin Blank."

"I'm Spike," he says. I've been around SF guys long enough to recognize the pride in a man's voice when his nickname's been earned, and I don't want to think about the ways Spike might have earned his. There's a cold cruelty in his smile that warns me that none of those ways were pleasant.

Danger aside - or perhaps included - he's gorgeous. Flawless. Pale skin, black leather, hard eyes -- he's death in a steel and silk package, and he pulls like a magnet at the darkest parts of my soul. Since those are the parts I tend to listen to, that pull is difficult to ignore. It helps to remind myself that any encounter of that nature would almost certainly be fatal. It's the 'almost' part of that statement that's so distracting.

"Spike?" I ask after a minute. "What kind of a name is that?" The sudden gleam in Spike's eyes makes me wonder if he's somehow realized the state I'm in, but he answers the question and leaves any implications strictly alone.

"I had some fun with railroad spikes, back in the day," he says, and leaves it up to me to imagine the sort of things a vampire might consider fun.

"Wonderful," I mutter. "Just wonderful."

"Cheer up, mate," Spike says. "I'm on your side, remember?" I'm less than reassured by that, and am about to tell him so when a shout from the far end of the alley hints that running would be the smart option.

I'm beginning to think that it's typical of Spike that he immediately turns and heads in the direction of the shouting. It also seems to be typical of him that the shouting changes tone abruptly, then dies off in a quick, pained gurgle.

Spike comes back out of the darkness licking blood off of the corner of his mouth, and with a deeply satisfied look on his face.

"He was surprisingly tasty," he says, smirking, and I have to stomp hard on the part of my brain that's trying to freak out at the realization of what just happened. One thing I learned very quickly in the Forces was that if it happens, it's obviously possible, and you'd better be able to quit bitching and deal with it in a hurry if you want to fucking stay alive.

Besides, I'm not an idiot. I've seen plenty of Bond films. It's always the guy who stands around going 'this can't be happening' who ends up as wormfood. Vampires or no, that's not gonna be me. My ally is eating my enemies. This is a good thing. Accept it. Move on.

When I speak, my voice is calm and even.

"What did he taste like?" Spike gives a surprised shout of laughter, the hard, killer's edges of his face breaking into a surprisingly boyish grin.

"Better than most of the locals do, but nothing to write home about." He looks at me sidelong. "I can't believe you asked that."

"What else am I going to ask? If you're looking for moral indignation, you've got the wrong guy."

"Never met a professional assassin before," Spike muses.

"Yeah, well, I've never met a vampire before, so I guess that makes us even."

* * *

"What the fuck is this, Martin?" Grocer asks, taking in my companion with one scathing glance. "He looks like a fucking Billy Idol wannabe."

"Damn it!" Spike says, like this is some long-held frustration. "He stole that look from me!"

"And he's apparently crazy," Grocer continues, with a sidelong look at Spike. The dismissive act is a facade, of course. I'm not the type to turn up with a civilian at my side, even when I'm not in the middle of a war zone, and Grocer's not stupid enough to ignore anyone who might be a threat.

"He saved my ass," I say, "and I owe him one."

"_Really_," Grocer says, in that used-car-salesman tone of voice that means he's about to be difficult. "I don't owe him anything."

"Can we at least do this inside?" Spike asks. "In case you hadn't noticed, the pair of us don't exactly look as if we belong here."

"Yeah," Grocer says grudgingly. "Come on in."

There's something about Spike's smile as we cross the threshold that I don't like very much.

* * *

_Author's Notes__: Yeah, this fic's a little insane. All feedback greatly appreciated. _


End file.
